


Of Friendships and Cake

by catbru



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Hyperion Heights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 08:52:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13073424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catbru/pseuds/catbru
Summary: In which Detective Rogers tries to make friends.





	Of Friendships and Cake

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed in 7x08 that Rogers had a bunch of plates and such so he could share his cake. While I agree it’s possible the cake might have been…unsafe, I still felt sad for him even before I noticed this. (And for some reason a story my mom told me about how my dad became emotionally 17 after he stopped drinking because that’s when he’d started came to mind.)

For some people, friendships are not easily noticed. They have spent too long with work colleagues to recognize when people are not around them because their salaries demand it, but because they want to be. For said people, they might say to themselves 'Oh, I enjoy the company of this person very much' but they would not dare call them a friend. It is not because 'this person' in question is not friend material, but there are times when, when it comes to something as _important_ as friendship, the presumption of such a relationship where were none could end up with hurt feelings and the blockings on social media. (Not that Detective Rogers had much of a foothold in social media, mind you. But if he had, he was certain this would occur.)

It is said by some experts that when a heavy drinker gives up the bottle they regress to the emotional maturity they had been at before their addiction began. In some, who start at high school parties well before the legal age and continue through college or the military and after, if they should find themselves deep enough within the addiction they come out of it at the state of maturity they had been when they began.

Detective Rogers was an apparent anomaly, should this be the truth of it. Surely he had started early, and yet most of the literature had suggested to him that he would experience a stunt in his personality. To some extent this might have been the case, but where, then, had immortality of youth gone? Where were the youthful follies?

(Of course, it could easily be explained to him had he his _true_ memories. After all, what immortality is there for a young boy on a ship? What follies could he afford when the consequence might be the lash for him, or worse and more probable, the lash his brother would offer to take in his place?)

When he would drink, he had been more sure of his standing in life. He could more easily see the pretty flutter of eyelashes of an interested lady were indeed aimed for him and not the fellow or woman to his right. Without the overthinking that came with sobriety, he could overlook the small flaws that only the owner of them would see in a mirror. (This was why, of course, he took to using a cream along the gash on his cheek some years ago. Insignificant or possibly even endearing to some, it stood out as a glaring _defect_ to his ego.)

The problem with Detective Roger's sobriety wasn't that it made him _younger_ than his age but far older. There had been a joke circulating about some months ago that he had been an old man stuck in his ways by the age of twenty-five. That he had berated another officer for his lack of 'good form' some weeks prior to _that,_ an archaic mindset even to the little old men and women who toddled in on walkers and canes to issue their complaints, had not helped.

This vast gap in his mental age compared to his physical had served him well when it came to looking for Eloise Gardner, but now that she had been found and returned, he found himself at a loss. What would he do with his time now, he wondered? Evenings spent pouring over the same case files would now be left free and he had no way to fill the time. How, he wondered, was one to fill time if one had no friends with which to fill it with? And, as a matter of fact, how did one go about making them? Beyond aquaintances he could tolerate for more than five minutes at a time, he could not recall having ever had an actual _friend._

(After all, while he was fortunate not to remember the biting lashes or the perpetual starvation, he did not have the memory of his brother and their companionship, and while he might have forgotten the pain that had spurred on centuries of vengeance over the loss of his one great love of no relation, he also could not remember the joy of her company.)

Of course, he had his years on the police force to draw on though it wasn't quite his detective reasoning he was relying. There had been birthday celebrations, well wishes, numerous instances of social gathering. In fact he could recall one instance, when his ears had pulled his eyes away from the sketches and poetry he'd been mulling over again, as Paris and Torres were _actually_ enjoying each other's company during such an event. (He had heard her say before that she found Paris to be an insufferable pig and he had commented to another that he'd often found Torres to be a bit...abrasive.)

So it came to be that when Eloise Gardner brought her uneven cake, spread about with an uneven layer of icing, and offered it to him with an uneven smile and an even more uneven flirtations, Detective Rogers had found it in his mind to share with his colleagues. After all, that was what one did when they were trying to make friends.

So after she left, and after he had stared at the cake with half a mind that it should wobble off from it's platter if left unobserved for too long, he gathered up many little plates and many little forks, and since it was the polite thing to offer along with such a messy confection, many little napkins.

He was immediately met with another quandary. How did one go about offering cake to the people around him? While many held no opinion of him one way or another, some valued his personality to be rather dull or rude. Usually this was of no consequence, because his opinion of them leaned toward the same if not more so.

'Hello, Smith,' he might say. 'I may normally view you in the light of being a jackass, but would you like some cake?'

'Most certainly!' This is something Smith would not say in return upon hearing that. 'And after this, let us lay all of our past transgressions to rest!' This is something Smith would most _certainly_ not say. In truth, Smith might have walked away from that imagined conversation with bruised knuckles and Detective Rogers might have spent some time staring at the ceiling in a daze.

In the end, after much internal debate, he figured the best course of action would to be take the first sliver for himself. Something small to show to his fellow colleagues that he had cake, and perhaps there could be well placed eyebrow raises and pointed fingers toward the platter as he mumbled around a mouthful of crumbs. (Fortunately it was rude to speak with one's mouth ful.) It would perhaps start off small, a light trickle of people, and to all who asked he would gladly give cake so long as there was cake to offer. He had hopes that by the end of the day there would be nothing left but the bottom bits of cake and icing that _always_ stuck to their platters. And perhaps there could even be a sliver of it left for a girl he should by all rights be too cross to even consider giving any to, but she had looked so sad when last he saw her and he thought perhaps something sweet might make her smile again.

While he had no illusions that instant friendships would be created over this, perhaps it would make them think better of him.

All his plotting and planning had been for naught as it was not too long before he sat there, staring dolefully at the cake as it lay in the garbage, clearly beyond any means of salvaging. And if Roni was of the belief that too much sugar was bad for a person, enough to throw an entire cake into the garbage, what did she tell herself was in the rum and the syrups and other bits of flavoring she served?

Perhaps later he would ask Henry how to go about this seeking of friends. The young man, quiet as he could be, seemed to make them quite easily. And perhaps, if he asked her nice enough, made it clear that it was in no way connected to the truck and that he would be more than happy to purchase the supplies, he could ask if Sabine would make him some of her beneigts to bring in some day.

(Do not worry. Someday he will realize he has friends.)


End file.
